This image released by Disney shows Emma Watson as Belle in a live-action adaptation of the animated classic "Beauty and the Beast." (Laurie Sparham/Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET134

This image released by Disney shows Emma Watson as Belle in a live-action adaptation of the animated classic "Beauty and the Beast." (Laurie Sparham/Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET134

Photo: Laurie Sparham

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This image released by Disney shows Dan Stevens as The Beast, left, and Emma Watson as Belle in a live-action adaptation of the animated classic "Beauty and the Beast." (Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET133

This image released by Disney shows Dan Stevens as The Beast, left, and Emma Watson as Belle in a live-action adaptation of the animated classic "Beauty and the Beast." (Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET133

Photo: (c) 2016 Disney Enterprises inc. All Rights Reserved.

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This image released by Disney shows Dan Stevens as The Beast in a live-action adaptation of the animated classic "Beauty and the Beast." (Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET105

This image released by Disney shows Dan Stevens as The Beast in a live-action adaptation of the animated classic "Beauty and the Beast." (Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET105

Photo: (c) 2016 Disney Enterprises inc. All Rights Reserved.

Image 9 of 12

This image released by Disney shows Dan Stevens as The Beast in a live-action adaptation of the animated classic "Beauty and the Beast." (Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET131

This image released by Disney shows Dan Stevens as The Beast in a live-action adaptation of the animated classic "Beauty and the Beast." (Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET131

Photo: (c) 2016 Disney Enterprises inc. All Rights Reserved.

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This image released by Disney shows Luke Evans as Gaston in "Beauty and the Beast." (Laurie Sparham/Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET135

This image released by Disney shows Luke Evans as Gaston in "Beauty and the Beast." (Laurie Sparham/Disney via AP) ORG XMIT: NYET135

Photo: Laurie Sparham

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Review: 'Beauty' is warm and enchanted

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"Beauty and the Beast" creates an air of enchantment from its first moments, one that lingers and builds and takes on qualities of warmth and generosity as it goes along. It's a beautiful movie, both in look and spirit, one of the joys of 2017.

A live action version of the 1991 Disney animation, it places at its center Emma Watson as Belle, who gets one of the finest introductions a movie could devise. She walks through an idyllic yet workaday French farming town, circa 1700, reading a book, a young woman of intellectual aspiration, and hence a local rarity. In this world, she stands out and yet blends in, perfectly at home and yet comfortable being apart. Watson lends Belle an ease of self too natural to be called self-assurance. It's more like contented being.

By the end of that walk, two things have happened to the audience. We feel that we are not seeing a generic storybook beauty, but a rare person in touch with her essence. And — this is important — we really care about her romantic prospects. The wrong guy could wreck this. We know that Belle must hold out until she finds someone special, someone fantastically special, a beast of specialness.

"Beauty and the Beast" was directed by Bill Condon, whose career has sometimes seemed like a moral journey and at other times like a cautionary tale. He has written and directed good, serious films that have generated respect but little box office, such as "Gods and Monsters" and "Kinsey," but he also gave us two fairly ghastly entries in the "Twilight" series, which made dump-trucks full of money.

Condon has always seemed too smart and conscientious to be a pure sell-out, and now we can see that it was all part of a master plan. By showing studio executives that he can deliver grand-scale, popular spectacle, he got the chance to take a crowd-pleasing Disney fantasy and inflect it with the emotional and psychological richness of a small, character-driven movie.

Thus, Belle's father is not merely the true but downtrodden saint you'd find in a fairy tale, but exactly the father you'd expect for a young woman of such equanimity and self-possession. As played by Kevin Kline, the father is intellectually engaged and enthusiastic, but with an underlying weariness — the exhaustion of staying spiritually alive in a world that is addicted to stupidity.

The embodiment of the world's addiction is Gaston (Luke Evans), one of the most admired people in the town and one of its most poisonous. He's evil, for sure, but very human — dangerous because he's stupid and self-deluded, with an inflated vision of himself that he must keep alive, lest he face the awful truth. And so needing the ego validation, he is determined to marry Belle, the one woman in town who knows that he's a contemptible idiot.

"Beauty and the Beast" has a feeling of old-fashioned Hollywood grandeur, calling to mind Technicolor extravaganzas such as "The Sound of Music," even as it's loaded with the best of modern effects and techniques. When Belle finds herself living in an old castle, as the unwilling guest of a goat-horned beast (Dan Stevens), the movie becomes a mix of live action and computer effects, all artistically conceived and meticulously executed. All the objects — the tea pots, the piano, the candle holder, the clock, the wardrobe — are infused by a human soul, and so they move and talk.

In one scene, a gorgeous realization of a meeting between old and new, the various pots and objects create a Busby Berkeley-like spectacle on the dining room table to one of the film's lively many songs by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. The scene is more than clever, more than a historical reference. It's poetry. Yes, every beast and every object has a human being trying to get out, but the movie's metaphor for human realization isn't lost here. The point is that every human being also has a human being trying to get out. And love, which is the story of "Beauty and the Beast," is how that happens.

Dan Stevens, who plays the Beast, gets lots of voice time, but his performance is mostly motion capture animation. Indeed, the animation of the Beast is so detailed and nuanced, so deep and full of feeling, that he starts to look good to us, not just virtuous but physically normal. When he finally turns back to looking like Dan Stevens, we're not relieved, just happy for him.

Is it revealing too much to say that a fairy tale has a happy ending? It's worth mentioning here because of the nature of the happiness, that it's happiness for everybody. "Beauty and the Beast" has received some advance controversy/publicity for having a gay character, Gaston's assistant, LeFou (Josh Gad). In fact, the gayness of the character is entirely implicit until the end, when there's a split second shot of him dancing with a man.

By then, everyone is dancing. When the objects come alive — played by famous faces such as Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Emma Thompson and Audra McDonald — we see that among them are interracial couples. This is Bill Condon's vision of a fairy tale ending, one of happiness and inclusion.

It's a very 2017 vision. Whether it proves to be the dominant vision of America in the 21st century or a last gasp of late 20th century idealism remains to be seen. But enjoy it while it's with us.